lusia, had been the confessor of Queen Isabella, but had exchanged the
bustle of the court for the learned leisure of the cloister. The little
town of Palos, with its seafaring population and maritime interests, was
near the monastery, and the principal men of the place were glad to pass
the long winter evenings in the society of Juan Perez, discussing
questions of cosmography and astronomy. Among these visitors were Martin
Alonzo Pinzon, the chief shipowner of Palos, and Garcia Hernandez, the
village doctor; and one can fancy how the schemes of Columbus must have
appeared to the little conclave as a ray of sunlight in the dulness of
their simple life. Hernandez, especially, who seems to have been somewhat
skilled in physical science, and therefore capable of appreciating the
arguments of Columbus, became a warm believer in his project. It is worthy
of notice that a person who appears only once, as it were, in a sentence
in history, should have exercised so much influence upon it as Garcia
Hernandez, who was probably a man of far superior attainments to those
around him, and was in the habit of deploring, as such men do, his hard
lot in being placed where he could be so little understood. Now, however,
he was to do more at one stroke than many a man who has been all his days
before the world. Columbus had abandoned his suit at court in disgust, and
had arrived at the monastery before quitting Spain to fetch his son Diego,
whom he had left with Juan Perez to be educated. All his griefs and
struggles he confided to Perez, who could not bear to hear of his
intention to leave the country for France or England, and to make a
foreign nation greater by allowing it to adopt his project. The three
friends--the monk, the learned physician, and the skilled
cosmographer--discussed together the propositions so unhappily familiar to
the last named member of their little council. The affection of Juan Perez
and the learning of Hernandez were not slow to follow in the track which
the enthusiasm of the great adventurer made out before them; and they
became, no doubt, as convinced as Columbus himself of the feasibility of
his undertaking. The difficulty, however, was not in becoming believers
themselves, but in persuading those to believe who would have power to
further the enterprise.

PEREZ WRITES TO THE QUEEN.

Their discussions upon this point ended in the conclusion that Juan Perez,
who was known to the queen, having acted as he